Growth Factor Expression by Cardiac Tissues in the Leopard Gecko ( <i>Eublepharis macularius</i> )
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Tissue homeostasis is a dynamic process involved in the maintenance of tissue structure and function in response to physiological fluctuations in biochemistry, metabolism, and physical conditions. Despite the profound role that growth factors play in homeostasis of organs such as the heart, constitutive patterns of expression are only known for a handful of species. Here, we investigated growth factor expression in the heart of a representative reptile, the leopard gecko ( Eublepharis macularius ; hereafter, ‘gecko’). We focused our investigation on three major classes known to be expressed by mammalian cardiac tissues: transforming growth factor β (TGFβ); vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGF); and basic fibroblast growth factor (FGF‐2). Similar to other squamates (snakes and lizards), geckos have a three‐chambered heart with two atria and one ventricle. The ventricular myocardium includes a trabeculated or spongy‐like inner compartment, and a thin, compact cortical layer. We determined that cardiac cells in both compartments of the gecko myocardium (trabeculated and compact) constitutively express a diverse panel of growth factor ligands and receptors commonly associated with wound healing and repair, including: TGFβ1, activin‐βA, and phosphorylated SMAD2; FGF‐2; and VEGF, VEGF receptor 1 (VEFGR1), VEGFR2, and phosphorylated VEGFR2. Using double immunofluorescence, we observed co‐localization of VEGF/VEGFR2 and VEGFR1/VEGFR2, indicating that – similar to mammals – reptilian cardiomyocytes may use paracrine and autocrine signalling. Taken together, these findings indicate a homeostatic role for these growth factors in the heart that is conserved across reptiles and mammals. Support or Funding Information Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Discovery Grant 400358 (to MV); Ontario Veterinary College Scholarship (to KJ) This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal .
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".